Family Histories of the following older parishioners and friends
of Immaculate Conception
Parish in Chelyabinsk, Southern Urals district, Russia, and its
mission parishes are being
recorded in a series of "Conversations" by Sister Alice Ann
Pfeifer with Sister Mary Elise Leiker, her interpreter and
interviewer.

Sister Alice Ann Pfeifer (born 1953), a member of the
Congregation of St. Agnes (C.S.A.)
and a 1971 graduate of Thomas More Prep-Marian in Hays, Kansas,
U.S.A., was part of the
exploratory team sent in May of 1993 to gather information on a
possible mission of the
Agnesians to Russia.

When she returned on mission to Chelyabinsk in August, 1995, her
arrival brought the
number of Agnesian Sisters in Siberia to five - four of them from
Ellis County, Kansas.
Sister returned to the U.S. in February, 1996, and returned to
Chelyabinsk in August of
1996.

While spending most of her time in Russian-language study, Sister
also began recording the
tragic stories of various ethnic-German exiles in Chelyabinsk - a
subject which should be of
interest to the many descendants and friends of Germans from
Russia who settled in the U.S.,
Canada, and southern South America in the half century between
1874 and 1924.

Sister wrote the first four articles in this series prior to
returning to the U.S. in February,
1996, and the rest since her return to Siberia in August of
1996.

Sister is the daughter of Ida Schaffer Pfeifer (born 1922) of
Liebenthal, Kansas, and the late
Albert Frank Pfeifer (1920-1974). Her grandparents - George
Pfeifer (1886-1955), Rose
Herrman Pfeifer (1891-1956), Alex Schaffer (1896-1976) and
Rosalia Legleiter Schaffer
(1901-1967) - were all born in the U.S. Many of her great
grandparents, however, were
brought to the U.S. by their parents from Russia's Volga River
Valley in the 1870s.